Call to disclose gender pay gap or lose deals

Public companies would be forced to disclose how much they pay men and women and appoint boards with at least 40 per cent women under proposals by federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner
Elizabeth Broderick
.

In a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday, Ms Broderick urged the Rudd government to take a tougher approach to regulating pay equity between the sexes, including greater monitoring of women’s salaries and banning firms from bidding for government contracts if they failed to meet anti-discrimination targets.

Ms Broderick called for a new national regulator to oversee affordable quality childcare for all parents who want it, which she said was “the most important piece of social infrastructure missing in this country".

Expensive and inaccessible childcare is stalling women’s participation in the workforce and holding back productivity growth, Ms Broderick said. “The reality is childcare is already too expensive for many families," she said.

Other reform options contained in a blueprint released by Ms Broderick yesterday included a national sexual harassment prevention strategy to clarify grey areas in the law for employers and new powers for her office to initiate sexual harassment investigations in businesses without the need for an individual complaint.

Ms Broderick also called for more women on sports boards to tackle discriminatory attitudes towards women that were a “dark side of sport".

The number of new female board appointments rose from 5 per cent to 24 per cent in the five months since the Australian Securities Exchange’s corporate governance council launched a drive to increase reporting of senior female staff numbers.

But Ms Broderick said the government should impose quotas for 40 per cent of women on public company boards if they don’t meet the target within five years voluntarily. Government boards would get three years to meet the same targets.

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Government procurement rules could be toughened to create an incentive for businesses to meet gender equity targets, she said.

Ms Broderick also urged the government to toughen its paid parental leave scheme by increasing payments from the minimum wage to two-thirds of income, paying superannuation contributions and giving fathers two weeks’ paid leave.

The government should monitor how companies incorporate existing parental leave with the taxpayer-funded scheme, which will begin on January 1, to prevent unintended consequences, she said.

She urged the government not to abandon gender equity reforms after the passage of its paid parental leave scheme, warning she had been involved in several reviews that had not yet lead to reform.

“With so many important reviews now behind us, there is a risk that we don’t follow through," Ms Broderick said. “Because we have opened up the debate on so many fronts, further reform may be put into the too hard basket."

The government has not yet responded to two reports it commissioned and received several months ago into gender pay equity and the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s spokesman said the government would respond to the reports but could not say when.